Editor's Note: Cherished even before they served

My mother turns 87 this month. One of her most poignant memories of growing up in Wilmington, N.C., is of a high school assembly where students were gathered to hear a presidential address on the radio. It began like this:

“Yesterday, December 7, 1941, a date which will live in infamy, the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan.”

Mom was a senior, and the moment wasn’t lost on her. As Franklin Roosevelt continued speaking through the static of the piped-in airwaves, documenting the surprise nature of the “dastardly” attack on Pearl Harbor, she looked around at the boys and young men of the assembled student body and wondered how many would have their lives cut short.

The world was closing in on New Hanover High School.

The looming sacrifice that hung in the air with FDR’s words turned very real in the tumultuous years that followed. Even before she headed off to Moody Bible Institute in Chicago, Mom lost friends. Word of more casualties among the familiar arrived periodically by mail.

Such was life everywhere in the 1940s: people dying before realizing adulthood, leaving their equally young friends to grieve. In the decades that followed, America’s WWII vets were revered at home and abroad. Unfortunately, veterans of less popular military campaigns, particularly the Vietnam War, didn’t fare as well.

It is a healthy sign of the evolution of society that today our military service members are again honored by almost all Americans, even those opposed to the wars of occupation we now find ourselves fighting abroad. Gradually, that bipartisanship also seems to be increasing our commitment to support our veterans not just with waving flags, but with the services they need while they fight and when they come home.

Our own Bruno de Solenni put it like this in a letter to The Triplicate last year just days before he was killed in Afghanistan:

“What has changed drastically between Vietnam and now is that even if the public doesn’t support the war, they still support troops which makes a huge difference. This is especially comforting if you are one of those soldiers walking through the airport wearing your uniform and coming home on leave or returning from a deployment.”

It’s Veterans Day, and our remaining WWII warriors are the grand marshals of the 10 a.m. parade up H Street and the guests of honor at a post-parade reception on the steps of Veterans Memorial Hall.

Cheer them on. What my mother and countless others realized on that gloomy Monday morning in 1941 is still true: They won’t be around forever.